"
Sanderson smiled. "Why didn't you tell Mary?"
The little man's face grew grave. "Because I didn't want to queer your
game. You saved Nyland--an innocent man. Knowing your reputation for
fairness, I was convinced that you didn't come here to deceive anybody."
"But I did deceive somebody," said Sanderson. "Not you, accordin' to
what you've been tellin' me, but Mary Bransford. She thinks I am her
brother, an' I've let her go on thinkin' it."
"Why?" asked the little man.
Sanderson gravely appraised the other. "There ain't no use of holdin'
out anything on you," he said. His lips straightened and his eyes
bored into the little man's. There was a light in his own that made
the little man stiffen. And Sanderson's voice was cold and earnest.
"I'm puttin' you wise to why I've not told her," he went on. "But if
you ever open your yap far enough to whisper a word of it to her I'm
wringin' your neck, _pronto_! That goes!"
He told Owen the story from the beginning--about the Drifter, his
letter to the elder Bransford, how he had killed the two men who had
murdered Will Bransford, and how, on the impulse of the moment, he had
impersonated Mary's brother.
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